I don't remember exactly what sparked my obsession with stretching my ears. Perhaps it was the four failed gun attempts on my poor abused, scarred lobes and my feeble attempt to reclaim them. Perhaps it was just another act of teenage rebellion against my school. Perhaps it was genuine curiosity, and a real sense of knowing, when I looked at stretched lobes it was like, 'yes!'. I'd always hated the kind of jewelry available for regular lobes.
At A Glance Author Ellie Contact Ellie@bme.anon When N/A Location NSW, Australia Regardless, I read experiences and talked to my friends about starting. I looked at sizes and compiled information. Then I approached my parents.
My dad is strangely conservative. He wears ties to work and used to polish his shoes every weekend. Compared to my father, my mother is a hippy child. She's forever encouraging of her daughters and I feel privileged to call myself her child. She's the one who talked me through leaving school at fifteen, through getting my school certificate and, now, my HSC. I figured she would be the best one to approach first with all my new-found information.
I made her a cup of tea and I sat her down. I said, "Mum, I don't want you to dismiss this straight away, but I want to stretch my ears."
She balked. I laughed. I presented my information, making sure to answer all her questions the best I could, showing her the exact size I wanted to go to (at that time, 5mm) and essentially letting her know I knew what I was doing.
She shot me down. Over the next few weeks, I'd take on the role of annoying child, wearing her down. She was convinced I was doing it solely for shock value. She thought the larger jewelry ugly and unbecoming. She believed it was too permanent, and I'd be sick of it within a few weeks. She said she was fine with my hair (which was bright purple and black at the time) but as far as piercings went, no way.
And I managed it. She took me out to Westfield's (shopping centre) and we ended up in Star Jewelry. I asked the man what I should start out with, and he gave me a 2mm horn spiral and a tiny o-ring and told me to just push a little through every day, and to come back when it was through and he'd sell me the next size up.
I now know this was probably not the best way to stretch one's ears, but at the time I knew no better and eagerly set forth. About a month later, I had one lobe at 2mm and was itching to start on the next.
Mum and I head back to the same place, and this time I buy a 5mm curved acrylic stretcher. It pops through about a month after purchase in the shower and I am ecstatic. By this point, my right ear was at 2mm, and I was eager to get the 5mm stretcher into it.
Back mum and I go to the store, and we buy an 8mm curved acrylic stretcher, essentially exactly the same as the 5mm one except bigger. I was so excited for this. It, too, slides through with little pain roughly a month later, and I jump online to look at the plugs available to me, before finally settling on a pair of bright red Kaos silicone eyelets.
They arrive and I clean one, take the stretcher out of my ear (making sure to admire the hole) and try to fold the eyelet. No dice. It keeps slipping out of my hand. I call for mum and she arrives at the door of the bathroom. I ask her if she could help me get my plug in and she says, "Oh no, I'm not touching those." A little bit of coaxing later, I've got a squishy Kaos plug in my ear and the first half of the 8mm stretcher in my other ear.
Finally, again, nearly a month later I have both ears at 8mm, adorned with Kaos, the red so vibrant it's visible through my hair. I was pleased, my parents were happy that I was happy, it was a win for everyone. I bought a clear pair of Kaos eyelets and wore those for nearly six months, changing them for a gorgeous pair of grey glass colourfronts when I needed to look mildly respectable.
Then, I got itchy. I started noticing imperfections when I removed my plugs. My left ear, the one that went first, was crooked, a result of the many gun piercings I endured before I knew any better. It was far too close to the side of my face. I made a decision: if I was going to stretch any further, I want them to be as even as possible. I took out the plug. That same week, I decided it was time to do what I'd been desperate to do for a few months now: make my way from 8mm to 1/2".
I went out to Big W and bought knitting needles, one in 10mm and one in 12mm. I asked my dad to bring home some teflon tape and a metal file. He did these things for me after I reassured him, again, that I knew what I was doing.
I cut the tapered end off the 10mm knitting needle and filed the back so it wouldn't scrape my ear, and I recovered some 8mm silicone o-rings as I discovered a violent allergy to the black ones after putting the glass jewelry in for the first time. It was a millimeter stretch, and it took me a week, coincidentally my last week of first term at my new school, where it is not uncommon to see many students wandering about with various large pieces of metal adorning their faces, so I was hardly the odd one out with my grey lump of plastic sticking out of my ear.
The Easter long weekend saw me off to Nowra, a few hour's train ride away, and it was on this train on the way home that I had an issue. I pulled out the taper, gently, as I was having some pain issues, something I had never really experienced before with my ears. I was on the end of a cold, which could have aided in the piercing flaring up, however I was not in the right mind. I looked at the taper carefully once I had removed it. It was disgusting. Lymph and blood spotted it and I wiped it all off with a tissue and held another up to my ear as my friend had helpfully pointed out, it was bleeding.
I panicked; I couldn't wait two hours, sitting on a train, to get to a bathroom to see the damage. I shoved the taper back through, praying I hadn't done something terrible. Somehow, odds against odds, my ear was fine when I ran to the bathroom at Central, two hours later.
I gave my ear a few days to calm down, performing sea-salt soaks and emu oil massages before I decided I couldn't wait any longer. I cut another length of 10mm knitting needle, filed down the ends, wrapped two layers of teflon tape over it, covered it all liberally with emu oil, and slid it in after my morning shower. I continued in this way for a couple weeks, wrapping more and more tape around my makeshift plug.
Two weeks later, I was staring blankly at my new 1/2" lobe, adorned with a black titanium tunnel I had bought online. I was startled at how large it actually was, and I loved it immediately.
It's now about four months later, and I find myself playing with it all the time. My left lobe has shrunk to about 2mm, and I expect that 2mm will take a very long time to heal completely. I adore my 1/2" lobe.
My journey has taken me through nearly two years of madness and three sets of too-small jewelry. I massage my lobes daily with emu oil and clean my tunnel daily. I've never had a problem with ear funk or infection. I love my lobes, and I love taking care of them.